The present invention relates generally to the field of wireless communication. In particular, the present claimed invention relates to a processor for performing coding and decoding operations in a wireless communication system.
Wireless communication has extensive applications in consumer and business markets. Among the many communication system applications are: fixed wireless, unlicensed (FCC) wireless, local area network (LAN), cordless telephony, personal base station, telemetry, mobile wireless, encryption, and other digital data processing applications. These wireless applications utilize different and usually incompatible protocols. Consequently, each application may require specialized hardware, software, and methodology. This is especially true for channel CODECs (encoders and decoders) because different communication standards typically utilize different channel coding and decoding algorithms. ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) solutions, which can be costly in terms of design, testing, manufacturing, and infrastructure resources, are inflexible and are therefore unsuitable for the changing wireless communication standards. DSP (Digital Signal Processor) solutions, while offering the advantage of flexibility, have other limitations. For instance, many DSPs are not powerful enough to handle the high data rate requirements of the more advanced wireless communication standards.
Accordingly, a need arises to overcome the limitations associated with the varied hardware, software, and methodology of encoding and decoding digital signals in each of the varied wireless applications.